Sonic The Fighters Review (XBLA)
Sonic The Fighters is an obscure fighting game that was released exclusively in Japan. It made its way over to the west as part of the Sonic Gems Collection that can be found on the Game Cube, Playstation 2 and Xbox. But recently the game was also ported to the Xbox Live Arcade.
Graphically Sonic The Fighters has the look I think of a early Sega Dreamcast games. The game does not look that bad by any means. The characters look nice enough and many of them have these funny little animations that may take you a little while to notice.
It is worth noting that the game has been given a nice fresh lick of paint over the version that we got on the Sonic Gems Collection. It does not look a million times better, but it certainly is a little shiner and clearer that the previously mentioned fighter.
As far as game play goes, Sonic The Fighters is as basic as you can get. I once read a review that said you could beat Sonic The Fighters by just pressing one button. And this really is kind of true, but at the low price that the game is its still a fun pick up and play for five minutes kind of game. Too be honest, the first time I played the it the fighting mechanics definitely felt clunky. It’s something to get used too.
One thing that I thought was really cool was how in this version you could play as Metal Sonic and Dr Eggman. I am pretty sure that these guys were not on the Sonic Gems Collection version. Just hit start on Sonic to be Metal Sonic and hit start on Bean The Duck for Dr Eggman. Of course you need to beat the game first to unlock these guys.
In all Sonic The Fighters is far from the best fighting game on the Xbox Live Arcade, but for Sonic fans its still a fun game to have. I am also sure that for younger novice gamers this would be a very fun game. For everyone else it pretty much might be too easy.
